happiness

1. 10 January 2025

   More people should blog

   I went to a wedding recently where several people there had an online presence. Reading their ideas beforehand made for much better conversations – and potentially longer-term friendships. I suspect t…

2. 3 March 2023

   Living in line with your values and priorities isn’t always easy

   One of the themes of this blog is the importance of aligning your decisions with your values and priorities. Sometimes, this isn't easy. Sometimes it's hard. 2022 was a pretty bad year for me, but des…

3. 28 April 2020

   The unmitigated joy of watching movies at 7x speed

   Try watching movies at 7x speed. You heard that right — a two-hour movie in under 20 minutes. Yes, you lose the audio and the pacing. But you gain structure, thematic clarity, and guaranteed flow. Lik…

4. 6 September 2019

   Baches (or: some terrible financial decisions can be great life decisions, and vice versa)

   File under: some terrible financial decisions can be great life decisions, and vice versa. Owning a bach is almost always the wrong call if you run the numbers — the opportunity cost on half a million…

5. 19 April 2019

   Buy experiences, not things??

   "To be happy, buy experiences, not things." It's a compelling slogan and I've repeated it myself. But the more I think about it, the more I question it. Experiences aren't all equally rewarding, and s…

6. 22 February 2019

   Warren Buffett’s most important lesson

   Warren Buffett is endlessly quoted about investing, but his most important lesson isn't about money. In a 2001 speech at the University of Georgia he said you measure success in life by how many of th…

7. 13 August 2018

   “Living doesn’t cost much, but showing off does”

   Geoffrey Miller's book *Spent* has probably saved me thousands of dollars. Its central point — "the fundamental consumerist delusion" — is that other people care less about the products we display tha…

8. 7 August 2017

   The billion dollar question

   Approaching 20, I asked myself a stark question: would I rather have $1 billion in the bank, or a fantastic relationship with a fantastic woman? The answer reshaped my priorities. I spent years workin…

9. 5 May 2017

   “If money doesn’t make you happy then you probably aren’t spending it right”

   Money can buy happiness — we're just usually bad at spending it in ways that deliver. There's research identifying eight principles for spending in ways that actually make you happier: buy experiences…

10. 30 July 2015

    “Very happy people”

    From a 2002 paper by Ed Diener and Martin Seligman, two fathers of modern happiness research: the very happy people were highly social, with stronger romantic and other social relationships than less…

11. 23 July 2015

    Clarkson (and others) on supercars

    One of the best ways of knowing whether you'll enjoy something is to look to the experience of others. There's a difference between wanting something and enjoying it. Take supercars. I fully empathise…

12. 2 May 2007

    Stumbling on Happiness

    Daniel Gilbert hasn't written a prescription for how to be happy. He's written a description of the psychological stumbling blocks we face in pursuing it. We're unique among animals in our ability to…